People Like Us(66)

22


We spend the morning in the game room, a bright, sunlit room in the northeast corner of the house that overlooks the sea. Its centerpiece is a full-size pool table, and the walls are lined with relics from carnivals, like antique Skee-Ball games, pinball machines, and one of those creepy fortune-tellers with glowing eyes where, for a penny, you can ask a question and it spits the answer out of its mouth on a slip of paper. I’d like to remain indefinitely at the pinball machine, which is crowned by a rather smug-looking clown grinning demonically down at me. But after an hour or so, Nola seems to grow bored of throwing perfect Skee-Ball games. She glances outside. “Do you want to hit a few golf balls into the ocean?”

“What?” I don’t look up from the evil clown. “Who am I, Cori?”

“She doesn’t own golf,” Nola mutters. She plants herself on a carousel horse and produces a notebook and pencil from her pocket. “Fine. Who do you like more, Spencer or Greg?” she says.

I turn from the pinball machine reluctantly, one hand still on the flipper. “Seriously? After everything that’s gone down, I’m probably going to lay off dating for a while.”

She laughs. “I meant who do you like more as a suspect.” She bites the end of the pencil. “Spencer has a weird creepy obsession. He kills Jessica and frames you to get back at you for hurting him. Then he kills Maddy when she stands in the way of getting you back. But Greg has a pure jealousy motive. It’s cleaner. No connection to Maddy, though.”

I hesitate. “I can’t see either of them killing Maddy.”

“Can you see either of them killing Jessica?”

“No more than you or me or Dr. Klein.” I slide down to the floor. “What’s the worst thing you ever did?”

She chews on the end of the pencil for a long moment. “I broke Bianca up with her boyfriend. We look almost like twins, and when we were little, we used to switch clothes, friends, boyfriends, just to see how long we could go before we got in trouble.”

“So you were close at one point.”

“It stopped being fun when I realized how much more people liked me when I was her. So I broke up with her first boyfriend while I was ‘playing’ her. I told him he smelled like a dead hamster. I mean, she forgave me for it. I was only eight.”

“Well, you’re probably not going to hell for that,” I say, sighing.

“If you believe my father, you can be forgiven for anything,” she says.

“He sounds like my dad.” My father before Todd died. He stopped being Catholic after the funeral, because it was outrageously unacceptable that a person could kill and ask for forgiveness and be absolved. No, Megan’s brother would burn in hell. That was Dad’s new religion. The religion of righteous burning in hell. Of seeking no earthly revenge, because you just can’t. That’s just not what we do. But the bastard will burn. That’s the faith that will keep the Donovans going.

“He absolutely did manipulate my grandfather,” she says with a faint smile, leaning her head against the horse’s pink-painted mane. “My father.”

“To get the house?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

I look around. It’s beautiful but eerily empty now that I know it used to be bursting with family. It doesn’t surprise me anymore that they have so many visitors. Otherwise, you might just disappear in it. “He could have shared it, right?”

She seems disappointed with my answer. “Not as a permanent residence. You wouldn’t get it. You’ve probably lived in the same place your whole life. You’re so normal, Kay. It’s enchanting.” She smiles and pats my head, and I duck away.

“What if Spencer’s guilty?” I sit down on the floor and support my head with my hands.

She slides down next to me. “Then you breathe a sigh of relief because it’s over and life goes on. If Greg did it, life goes on. This nightmare ends one way or another.” She turns my face gently toward hers. “You are resilient as hell, Donovan.”

I try to smile, but my face is plaster. Resilient is the wrong word for someone who attracts tragedy like a magnet but survives to watch her loved ones die.



* * *



? ? ?

LATER, AFTER A warm soak in an enormous claw-footed tub with rose-scented sea salts, I feel much calmer. Nola and I sit together in the library on a leather settee, watching the hypnotic flames of a gas fire leap and dance.

I gaze into the rings of fire, blue melting into yellow and gold. “We don’t have the full picture.”

Nola glances at me wordlessly.

“Our suspect list is clouded by what we know about people,” I say. “What we think about them. And ultimately, what we want to happen to them. We have no physical evidence. The cops have such an overwhelming advantage. That’s how you can be so wrong about someone you think you know.”

“But we also know about things they don’t. Like the revenge blog.”

“That’s true. But my point is, we need to go deeper. Brie tried to record a confession because she thought she could get one out of me. Not because she had any evidence. Because she thought if she said the right things, she’d lead me to it.”

“And you think you can do that?”

I nod slowly. “I think I have a shot. Spencer definitely. Greg maybe. He leaves himself wide-open.”